“When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives” (Mark 14:26). As noted in Christian Worship: Psalter, the Passover meal was concluded with singing Psalms 115–118, psalms which remind believers of the Lord’s love, faithfulness, and deliverance for his people (p. 592).
These psalms were quite possibly the last songs and prayers our Savior sang with his disciples before the events in the Garden of Gethsemane. What comfort is now ours because he has fulfilled these songs of deliverance for us? This blog series offers some answers to that question based on the biblical truths found in Psalms 115–118. (You can read the previous post here.)
Psalm 117
“Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord” (Psalm 117:1-2).
It occurs to me every time I read this psalm that these two verses are what the Christian life is all about.
Worship and praise.
Psalm 117 also gives us the reason for our worship and praise.
Have you ever thought about the fact that God doesn’t need to give us an explanation for why we should worship him? He could just demand it of us for no other reason than that he is God. (And he would be entirely right to do so!)
What God did instead was fill the pages of his holy Word with all the incredibly amazing reasons we have for praising his name throughout all generations. Leaf through all the accounts in Scripture and you’ll see: Great is God’s love toward us, and his faithfulness endures forever (Psalm 117:2).
Adam and Eve had and then lost practically everything. They were created in God’s image to praise him for all eternity. God placed them in the Garden of Eden to work and tend to it, and his one command was that they not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Obeying that command was Adam and Eve’s act of spiritual worship.
But they disobeyed God’s command, giving into Satan’s temptations, and because of that, sin and all of its terrible consequences entered into God’s once-perfect creation. Just like that, all people—from Adam and Eve to you and me—stand condemned before God because, as Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
How soon after that first bite do you suppose Satan switched from his role as a tempter to his accusatory role? I imagine pretty quickly. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly, but we do know that Adam and Eve experienced the consequences of their sin: feelings of shame, fear, and guilt.
Shame because they were naked. Fear because they had disobeyed God. Guilt—seen in their actions of sewing fig leaves to cover themselves and hiding when they heard the sound of the Lord in the garden—because despite their attempts to put the blame elsewhere, Adam and Eve had no one but themselves to blame for what they had done.
And yet . . . we see evidence of God’s great love in the very same chapter where we first hear about humankind’s fall into sin. Adam and Eve lost perfection and paradise, but they didn’t lose God’s love. Because God is faithful, even when we are not. God promised his fallen creation a Savior—one who would crush the serpent’s head and silence his ugly accusations against God’s people.
Praise the Lord!
That promise of a Savior—and evidence of God’s great love and faithfulness to his people—can be traced from Adam and Eve to the patriarchs, to the Israelites enslaved in Egypt and then wandering in the desert, to God’s people living in the Promised Land under the judges and then the kings of Israel and Judah, to the people carried off in captivity in Babylon and then returning to a land forgotten by all but the oldest of their number, all the way to a dark and lonely hill upon which the Son of God died for the sins of the whole world. Then look—there in the empty tomb where our Savior was laid . . . nothing but the grave clothes neatly folded because great is our God’s love to us, and his faithfulness endures forever!
Dear Christian, rejoice!
You are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemptive work of your Savior, Jesus. No shame. No fear. No guilt. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2).
What grace-filled reason is found in the psalmist’s imperative—the command—to praise the LORD? You’ve been set free! Look to the cross where your condemnation was nailed and done away with. Look to the empty tomb where sin’s curse and death itself have been crushed and done away with by your ever-faithful, always loving God! Look to the means of grace in Word and sacrament—see there the great love God has for you, his faithfulness to you, and his promises that endure forever.
Let the exuberant joy that is yours in Jesus fill your days until you see your Savior face-to-face.
Praise the Lord!
For more devotional material on the Psalms, check out John F. Brug’s The People’s Bible: Psalms 1-72 (and73-150). Another great resource for devotions on what the Christian life is all about is Pastor Mark Paustian’s Our Worth to Him: Devotions for Christian Worship.
Alex Brown is the marketing and content copywriter at Northwestern Publishing House. He has his Master of Divinity degree from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and enjoys reading, writing, and spending time in God’s creation.